Absences Anger Panel Members

Post-sept. 11 Issues Covered At Meeting

September 11, 2003|By Tanya Weinberg Staff Writer

Immigrant communities in fear, unprecedented government access to citizens' private records, and racial profiling were among the topics discussed at a town hall meeting on the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary.

Organizers intended the meeting to give South Floridians the chance to discuss how life has changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and whether the country is doing a good job at balancing security and freedom.

Yet the meeting opened with comments about the striking lack of balance on the panel.

Leaders from organizing groups the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center were dismayed to find several empty seats around them as they addressed a crowd of more than 100 people at Miami-Dade Community College.

U.S. Attorney Marcos Daniel JimM-inez, a representative from the FBI, and the assistant commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement never appeared. All three had originally agreed to attend.

"I think it's somewhat inexplicable, since the U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is now on a road show across the country defending the Patriot Act and security measures to audiences all around the country," said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida ACLU.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Attorney's Office and FBI said they reviewed the program and decided the forum was not appropriate for their participation.

FDLE spokesman Al Dennis said assistant commissioner Jim Sewell had tried hard to arrange his schedule, but conflicts in Tallahassee made it unfeasible.

With his absence, there was nobody to defend one of the myriad programs criticized by panelists and questioners as an attack on immigrants. Last year, Florida became the first state to deputize local police officers for federal immigration law enforcement.

Other measures discussed were the detention of hundreds of Muslims in the post Sept. 11 investigations, a new policy on detaining Haitian asylum seekers arriving by boat, and the fact that illegal immigrants can no longer get drivers licenses.

"We have clients afraid to take their children to school, afraid to take their children to the doctors, afraid of going to the immigration building, even though they are legal, because they're afraid they'll be detained and deported."

In the audience Wednesday was Boca Raton resident Bill West, who retired earlier this year as national security section chief for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He said he had doubts about the enemy combatant procedures used by the government, but otherwise supported post-Sept. 11 initiatives.

He took issue with the panelists' portrayal of the war on terrorism becoming a war on immigrants.

"Immigration law enforcement has been so ineffective for so many years that post 9-11, even a modicum of increase in enforcement efforts have stirred this kind of reaction from the activist community, from the liberal community," West said.

Shabbir Motorwala of Miami stood up to say he, like many American Muslims, was an immigrant and an American by choice who would "put our blood to save this country."

The Sept. 11 hijackers, he pointed out, "were not American Muslims.

"They were not even legal residents and if immigration had done their job at that time and screened them, we would not even be having this discussion now."

Tanya Weinberg can be reached at tweinberg@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5029.